Sturridge explains the team-talks that inspired Liverpool victory v Spurs

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Daniel Sturridge has explained how the heartbreaking Final defeats under Jurgen Klopp helped Liverpool be ready for every eventuality against Spurs.

In 2016, we lost both the League Cup and Europa League against Manchester City and Sevilla respectively, before the infamous Champions League loss to Real Madrid in Kiev last year.

According to Sturridge, who didn’t come off the bench in Madrid, Liverpool discussed what to do in certain situations – like if they went ahead or behind – which hadn’t been previously done.

“When we got in at half-time everyone started speaking about how they felt we needed to improve for the second half. In the Europa League we were 1-0 up and we lost 3-1,” he told the Guardian.

“We had a long talk as a group of players on Wednesday. We said: ‘If we go one up how do we play? If we go one down how do we play?’ It’s about being prepared for everything. That was important, just the players hashing it out. We haven’t had those conversations before. I feel like maybe before the Europa League final we didn’t prepare as well. We’d had two [European finals] before this year so we have learned much more.”

Sturridge is likely to depart this summer on the expiration of his contract.

He’s been a top forward for us, but sadly he’s lost his pace because of injuries and we need a more dynamic option from the bench.

We wish him success elsewhere of course, and hope he can find a team who play him regularly up top.

Aston Villa might be a good fit, considering he’s a Birmingham lad and the side will be looking for attacking reinforcements following their promotion to the Premier League.

In his place, we expect Jurgen Klopp to buy someone younger and who is better on either wing – which is a position we need to cover in 2019/20.

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